The Minister

The Minister (died 1559) was a French Protestant minister whose murder, allegedly at the hands of King Francis II of France, led to a widespread outbreak of Catholic-Huguenot violence.

Biography
The man known to history as "the Minister" was born in the French countryside, the son of Severin. He and his family converted to Calvinism during the Reformation, and he became a Protestant minister, holding secret church services in a barn. In 1559, his church service was attacked by Catholic thugs led by Luc, who had Emile de Bourbon dragged out of the barn and beaten to death, while the thugs also burned the barn to the ground. The Minister came to the court of King Francis II of France and Mary, Queen of Scots to demand justice, but Francis let the murderers get away due to Lord Stephane Narcisse's threats to blackmail him over his role in his father Henry II of France's death. The Minister later returned to the French court to warn the King and Queen that the Huguenots were preparing to bomb a monastery if the crown did not release imprisoned Huguenots. The Minister was seized and thrown in the dungeon, where he was cruelly tortured until he confessed that the Huguenots had placed gunpowder kegs underneath the monks' sleeping quarters at Vauclair Abbey in Laon. Prince Louis I of Bourbon, Prince de Conde discovered that the kegs were full of sawdust instead of gunpowder, and, when Francis discovered this duplicity, he had the Minister tortured further, even as the Minister claimed that his friends had tricked him and that he had told the truth the whole time.

Death
Mary later convinced Francis to free the Minister, as she deduced that the Huguenots may have wanted for the innocent Minister to be executed in order to provoke Protestant outrage against the Catholic monarchy. Francis released the Minister, who was sent to Epernay for medical treatment, and he sent Sebastian de Poitiers and some armed guards to escort him. However, the entourage was ambushed by Huguenot assassins, who killed all of the guards except for Sebastian, who was wounded by an arrow and believed dead. Jacob Ravell proceeded to stab the Minister in the chest with a dagger in a shocking act witnessed by Sebastian, and his body was then crucified upside-down in the village. His death was thus blamed on King Francis, provoking Huguenot anger against the government and the growth in strength of the Calvinist rebels.